When a group of musicians from Afghanistan meets up with supporters in Boston this week at the New England Conservatory, their visit will be historic: students and faculty from the country’s oldest independent music school teaming up with students and faculty from one of the world’s newest.

The latter group — 46 students ages 10 to 18 (33 boys and 13 girls) and 16 faculty from the Afghanistan National Institute of Music — is on a tour that will take them to Washington, D.C., New York, and Boston, for performances with Western orchestral instruments and traditional Indo-Afghan ones.